From “spoiled” to AI: rethinking my journey in energy tech

Not long ago, I caught myself thinking something I never expected to.Listening to younger colleagues complain about a slightly clunky UI or having to manually enter a single item into a system, my instinctive reaction was:

Spoiled.

Back when I started in the UK energy industry, things looked very different.Twelve years ago, fresh out of university with a CV proudly declaring I was “proficient in Microsoft Office,” I walked into my first role at an energy supplier.

What followed were three years of spreadsheets everywhere.

Excel reconciliations.
VLOOKUPs stacked on VLOOKUPs.
Mail merges.
Stuffing envelopes.

It was tough. But it forced you to understand the market properly. You had to know how processes connected, what validations mattered, and how what you did would ripple downstream. You didn’t just run the process. You understood it.

Then I encountered Junifer for the first time. And honestly, I was in awe.

Suddenly the system handled validations, flows, and structure. I didn’t need endless spreadsheets to reconcile data or memorise every rule. Instead, I could focus on designing better processes and supporting agents to do their jobs well. It changed how I thought about technology. Not as a crutch, but as an amplifier.

For a long time, I assumed that was the big shift: manual work to system-led operations. But recently I realised we’re already moving again.

I was sitting in a workshop with several external BAs, watching the room slowly fill with handwritten process maps. Four sides of a whiteboard covered in arrows, notes, and diagrams that would eventually need transcribing and documenting afterwards.

And I remember thinking: I wouldn’t do it like this anymore. Not because it was wrong. It worked perfectly well for years. But today I’d approach it differently.

Collaborative visual tools would capture the process live. AI could summarise the conversation and generate structured outputs afterwards. Instead of spending hours rewriting notes, I could focus on the part that actually matters: the discussion itself.

Talking to people.
Understanding problems.
Designing better experiences for customers.

And that’s when it hit me. Maybe the next generation aren’t spoiled. Maybe they’re just starting somewhere different. Where I started with spreadsheets, many started with structured systems already in place. Now their starting line includes intelligent tools that remove friction from information and documentation. Their “wow” moment won’t be automation. It will be intelligence.

Of course, some things in energy never change. Regulation still shapes everything we do. Market processes still expect precision. Data quality still determines success or failure. And customers still just want their bill to be right. The tools evolve. The responsibility doesn’t. Now AI is the next step in that journey.

At first, I saw it as a productivity tool — faster drafts, clearer explanations, quicker preparation. But seeing how teams are starting to apply it across operations and process design, that excitement I felt discovering Junifer has returned.

Because AI isn’t replacing the work we care about. It’s removing the friction around it.

Which means we can spend more time on the things that actually matter: better conversations, better processes, and better experiences for customers.

And maybe that’s not being spoiled.

Maybe that’s progress.